So my ol' Zappa buddy Janok co-wrote a Geology textbook that was just published (July 2025) by Cambridge University Press. I got my copy in the mail yesterday (which won't be yesterday when you read this).
As you can see, it's called Earth History. Basically, it's the story of our planet as told by rocks.
As Janok and his co-author Peter explain, "rocks are books telling us about geological stories." The review of Earth History in Geoscientist magazine predicts that it "may turn out to be a hallmark book in the teaching of geology." The review also mentions that the book has "an excellent glossary."
Believe it or not, I wrote the glossary! Janok didn't have time to write it, so he got me to do it. It's not easy writing definitions when you don't know what the words mean, so first I had to learn a whole bunch of terms like diamict, glacio-eustasy, and left-lateral strike-slip.
I like how it starts off by "reading the rocks" of the Grand Canyon, and incorporates all the relevant sciences as the chapters proceed. The authors also survey various unscientific theories of earth history, respectfully explaining how they are all contradicted by the rocks. Of course there's a lot about dinosaurs. And a lot about mass extinctions, including the one we're probably in the midst of. (My favorite subtitle: "The Greening of Earth, Climate Change, and the Great Dying.")
David Bonner
newbonner@gmail.com